Thế
Lữ is the pen name of Vietnamese poet, novelist, playwright and stage
director Nguyễn Thứ Lễ (1). He was born in 1907 in Vietnam, when the
country was still under French colonial rule. He finished colonial middle
school (thành chung), a significant achievement at that period, and studied
at the Indochina College of Fine Arts in Hanoi. He left it soon afterwards to
start his writing career (2). He was one of the founders of the illustrious
literary group Tự Lực Văn Đoàn (3) and also wrote for the following magazines Phong Hoá, Ngày Nay, Tinh Hoa.

His
poetry works include:

Mấy
vần thơ
(1935) [A few verses]

Mấy
vần thơ, tập mới
(Đời nay, Hà Nội, 1941)[A few verses, new tome]

His
detective and mystery novels:

Vàng
và máu
(1934) [Gold and
Blood]

Bên
đường thiên lôi
(1936) [On the
Devil’s Road]

Lê
Phong
phóng viên
(1937) [Reporter Le
Phong]

Mai
Hương và Lê Phong
(1937) [Mai Huong
and Le Phong]

Đòn
hẹn
(1939) [Appointment
to a Blow]

Gói
thuốc lá
(1940) [The
Cigarette Pack]

Gió
trăng ngàn
(1941) [Wind and
Moon in the Forest]

Trại
Bồ Tùng Linh
(1941) [Bo Tung Linh
Camp]

In
1945, he joined the Viet Minh resistance movement against the French. After
this period and particularly after 1954, socialist realism was the only
doctrine officially accepted in literature and arts in communist North
Vietnam. Romantic literature, poetry and music were severely censored. However
he was a prominent member of government sponsored associations of writers and
artists. He died in Saigon on 6-03-1989 (Wikipedia).

Thế
Lữ is widely recognized as one of the major pioneers of the movement called
New Poetry of the 1930’s. Literary critics Hoài Thanh and Hoài Chân wrote
in 1942 “Regarding the new form [of poetry], Thế Lữ’s poetry is not
timid at all, it is new in its number of verses, number of words, its rhymes,
its sound cadence”(4). In 1965, Trần Tuấn Kiệt, a South Vietnamese
literary critic, wrote “Now, Thế Lữ is living in the North. Literature
over there is realist literature, in the same direction with socialism. We are
in the domain of poetry, and poetry is different from propaganda, from
political theories. We are not talking about Thế Lữ of today, but only to
reminisce about Thế Lữ of a remote past: Thế Lữ of romantic poetry and
as a poet who contributed to the prewar New Poetry movement”(4).

This
poem about a tiger in a zoo is a classic among Vietnamese who grew up in South
Vietnam between 1954 (the year the country was divided in two different
states) and 1975, when the communists took over South Vietnam. School students
had to know its first part by heart and most educated South Vietnamese are
still able to recite a few of its verses. When it was published in 1936, the
second half of the poem, where the tiger expresses it “thousand autumns”
resentment against people who hold it in a life of confinement was censored by
the French colonial administration. Most likely, the tiger was viewed as a
transparent allegory of Vietnam and the well maintained but vulgar and fake
environment of the zoo represented the self proclaimed “civilized”
colonial society to which millennial Vietnam was forced to adapt. The poem was
dedicated to Nguyễn Tường Tam (1905-1963), who was a famous writer (under
pen name Nhất Linh), co-founder of Tự Lực Văn Đoàn, and a nationalist
revolutionary who was fighting for Vietnam’s independence.

About
this poem ‘Nostalgia of the Jungle’, Hoài Thanh and Hoài Chân wrote:

“Let’s
read the following verses:

I
miss the mountains and forests with their immense shade and ancient trees,
With winds howling in the forests, with torrents shrieking
through the mountains,
While roaringmy formidable epic
song,
I walked with dignity, I commanded respect
My body undulating like harmonious waves
Frolicking in the secretive shades of spiny leaves and cutting
grasses.

Reading
these verses nobody can pout his lips and question the revolution in poetry
that is rising. Even Thế Lữ’s [traditional] poems of seven words, five
words, [alternating] six and five words [per verse] are completely different
from before. Thế Lữ cracked a framework that had not changed for a
thousand years. His use of words is very bold. As we read some of his poems,
in particular “Nostalgia of the Jungle”, we get the impression of being
moved, tormented by an extraordinary force. Thế Lữ acts like a general who
commands the Vietnamese language with irrefutable orders.”

Hien
V. Ho, MD

Bs
Hồ Văn Hiền

Notes:

1)nói
lái: “speak-back” form of slang or word play. Here the vowel ‘ê’ of
the second word Lễ is switched to
followthe consonants Th of the
first word Thứ to make ‘Thế’, and vowel ‘ư’ of the first word
goes after the consonant L of the secondwordLễ to make

‘Lữ’.

2)Hoài Thanh-Hoài Chân, in Thi
Nhân Việt nam,1942

3)Tự lực văn đoàn:
Literally “Self Reliance Literary Group”, formed in 1933, with the
following devices: “Always modern, youth oriented, life loving, striving and
believing in progress. To follow Populism, avoid bourgeois or aristocratic
inclinations. To respect individual liberties. To make people know that
Confucianism has become obsolete. To
apply Western methods into Vietnamese literature.”